Scott Reid

[Employment Insurance, November 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, last week we were stunned to learn that the EI fund surplus has reached the record level of $45 billion, while the chief actuary of the human resources directorate recommended that the surplus never exceed $15 billion.

Is it the Prime Minister's intention to lower the premiums for employees and employers, and if so, when?

[Petitions, November 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to introduce a petition on the subject of the lack of collective bargaining rights for rural route mail carriers. The petition draws the attention of hon. members to the fact that rural route mail carriers are forbidden under subsection 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act to bargain collectively.

The petitioners encourage Parliament to repeal subsection 13(5) of that act. They also point out, and this is a point strongly emphasized in the petition, that rural route mail carriers frequently earn less than the minimum wage when their pay is calculated on an hourly basis.

[Official Languages, November 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the RCMP said it issues unilingual traffic tickets in Gatineau because the Contraventions Act requires it to enforce Bill 101. This just is not so.

The Official Languages Act obliges the RCMP to offer bilingual services throughout the national capital region. The act also states, “In the event of any inconsistency between this act and any other act of Parliament, this act shall prevail”.

When will the Solicitor General order the RCMP to obey the law of the land and issue bilingual tickets only in Gatineau?

[Petitions, October 30th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to introduce a petition on the subject of child pornography, which is a matter of critical importance to all Canadians. This petition draws the attention of hon. members to the fact that the creation and use of child pornography is condemned by a clear majority of Canadians.

The petitioners encourage Parliament to take all necessary steps to protect our children by outlawing all pornographic depictions of children. They also point out, and this is a point strongly emphasized in the petition, that the law on child pornography ought not to be effectively rewritten and largely nullified by the courts. As a concluding remark, I would just like to indicate my own strong support for this petition.

[Official Languages, October 30th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, what the RCMP is doing is not merely unfair, it is also against the law. Section 22 of the Official Languages Act states:

Every federal institution has the duty to ensure that any member of the public can communicate with and obtain available services from its head or central office in either official language, and has the same duty with respect to any of its other offices or facilities

(a) within the National Capital Region;

When will the Solicitor General order the RCMP to stop violating the Official Languages Act by issuing unilingual tickets? When will he order the RCMP to stop serving as the enforcer of bill 101?

[Official Languages, October 30th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it used to be that the federal government regarded the language of traffic tickets as the litmus test of linguistic duality. In a series of court cases it challenged the legality of unilingual parking tickets across Canada.

However, less than one kilometre away from where I stand today, the RCMP is issuing unilingual parking tickets on federal land in the Gatineau.

Why is a federal agency helping to actively promote the mandatory use of only one official language in part of the national capital region?

[Supply, October 29th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, after that last question I just have to make a comment on the extraordinary frustration from the hon. member that we should have openness in our system of appointments. He suggested that inappropriate questions might be asked in the course of questioning a person as to whether or not he or she is suitable for some government appointment.

If a question that is asked is inappropriate and is beyond the pale of what the public will accept, then the person who asked the question, who raised the point from the past of the potential appointee, will suffer the consequences in public opinion. I think there is a natural mechanism to protect us from going too far and that mechanism is the wisdom of the Canadian people who will not tolerate too much inappropriate probing into the pasts of individuals.

I do think that if one takes a look at the process by which potential appointments are reviewed in the United States and elsewhere, one would find that on the whole the questions are very practical and policy oriented. They do not get as much coverage as the examples the hon. member has mentioned, but I think we do find that on the whole openness in appointments leads to a superior quality of appointments.

It is not a spectacular process and that is why the member is not aware of these many examples. Nonetheless, I think it does produce a better quality of appointed official.

[Falun Gong Practitioners, October 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the House unanimously voted for the Prime Minister to raise the matter of 13 Falun Gong practitioners who have been jailed in China and in some cases very badly mistreated for nothing more than peacefully practising their spiritual beliefs.

Each of these 13 individuals has close personal ties to Canada. Lizhe He, imprisoned at the Seventh Labour Farm, New Qianjin Prison, is the husband of a Toronto resident. Mingli Lin, imprisoned at the Dafeng Labour Camp, has a brother in Montreal. Yueli Yang, imprisoned at Xinan Women's Labour Camp, is the mother of a Toronto resident. Jiangang Huang, imprisoned at Dafeng Labour Camp, is the brother of a Canadian citizen who lives in Victoria. All the others have husbands and wives, brothers and sisters here in Canada.

We ask the Prime Minister to do all that he can when he meets this weekend with the President of China to ensure that these peaceful individuals can be reunited with their loved ones on Canadian soil as soon as possible.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, the opposition that our party is expressing, that the eight premiers who oppose the Kyoto accord are expressing, that I think 70% of Albertans are expressing, and the opposition that arises in public opinion as awareness of the Kyoto accord and its full implications become clear, is driven by something other than the concerns to which the hon. member was referring to.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, one of the problems is that the whole Kyoto accord is essentially an accounting shell game. The response of the government in trying to deal with the Kyoto accord has been to engage in its own accounting tricks and games. It is talking about the credits it might get for natural gas exports. It can get supposedly 70 megatonnes of credits, except that the Kyoto accord will not allow it. Therefore, the argument is all nonsense.

There was a discussion of getting credits for forests and for clean farming which the federal government would take. Those are under provincial jurisdictions. It has no right to make that assertion. The first thing that would happen if the accord were ratified here and we attempted to claim these credits for the federal government is that the provincial governments would say that those were their credits. They would take the federal government to court. In my opinion they would win. Crown land in Canada is provincial Crown land, outside of the territories.

There has been talk of credits for clean agricultural practices that form carbon sinks. Farming is a joint jurisdiction so it is not clear exactly who gets the credits. Certainly the federal government does not get them all so there would be a battle over that. Not only are the interests of the provinces at stake versus the federal government. Farmers would very much have a legitimate interest if we were to ratify the Kyoto accord. It would result, as many people believe, in higher prices for fertilizer and for the fossil fuels that are used for tractors and for transportation of farm goods, which would generally drive up farming costs and drive down farming incomes.

We can expect that farmers would have a very legitimate interest as well as having some kind of credit for their farming practices and for the benefits that are produced with those carbon sinks. Those are some of the kinds of problems we would run into. Frankly this thing would be tied up in litigation for a very long time.